The chins are going to move in and supply a political dome which shields Afghanistan as the enemy of my enemy is my friend (China has been playing Sun Tzu for at least 10 years globally). China will mine lithium for 'Western green energy' whilst pursuing OBOR using Afghanistan as political detente - having friends that are true followers of islam and the West have Baizuo
If you don't see this is the resurgence of the military industrial complex promoting terror through quran believing imbeciles supported by the Democrats, you ain't black.
>>94432 I'm not sure why Jinnie the Ping things things are going to turn out differently than the other bajillion times foreign powers have tried and failed to take Afghanistan.
>>94435 I think this is being oversold by a lot of right-wing media types who are acting as if he's being wheeled into press conferences with pea soup dribbling out of his mouth. However, he's clearly past his best, which is perfectly reasonable when you're pushing eighty, but not when you're also the POTUS. On the plus side it doesn't really matter, because he's more or less totally onboard with the political orthodoxy of the American system, so all he really has to do is keep the seat warm. Other than some minor logistical and tactical failings that were probably decided by military advisors rather than the president, I'm not sure why people are so angry at him for over the Afghanistan withdrawal. Was he supposed to hang around another two-decades getting everyone who wanted out on a plane? No one in Britain even remembered we were in Afghanistan until we began leaving so the outrage is quite hollow as I see it. Now we've got a dozen cabinet minsters and the same again with non-governmental talking heads going on like they have a genetic memory of the First Anglo-Afghan War, but none of them have any ideas, just a hazy knowledge of history and a bag of spuds.
>>94427 >technocrats and Kommisars, enjoy your socialism / corporatism (fascism)
Hey, look, the OP's senile too!
>>94436 Honestly, I was expecting a very bland president who didn't do anything, and he's impressed me on the whole. He said he'd go after the big technology monopolies (to be fair, I don't think he's got round to it yet) and he is spearheading multiple huge investment projects. If Donald Trump was a clueless puppet of the right, Biden is at worst a senile puppet of the left, which I personally prefer.
>>94438 >If Donald Trump was a clueless puppet of the right, Biden is at worst a senile puppet of the left, which I personally prefer.
Unfortunately Biden is a senile puppet of the right. Sure he's a democrat but for all you lots talk of Ovaltine windows you should be able to spot he's in the pocket of investment banks.
>multiple huge investment projects
These have failed, or rather it's mostly bollocks that has nothing to do with rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure. It's actually a bipartisan issue that has been decades in the making but the American system has meant that the two trillion spending plan for infrastructure accounts to around 3.5% of GDP, compared to 5% in Europe and 8% in China.
Keep in mind the US has long neglected spending so this isn't even enough to address the cracks that straining existing business. The Americans thump their chest about China but consistently fail to put in place the policies to meet the challenge, it's ridiculous.
>>94440 >Keep in mind the US has long neglected spending so this isn't even enough to address the cracks
They really have. When you visit America, one of the first things that strikes UK visitors is how fucking terrible the roads are - the reason they drive such massive trucks is that the roads and motorways are full of potholes and cracks - nothing like ours.
>>94443 It really depends where you are. I'm based in the US and have lived in a few different places. Out west where the weather ranges from hot to less hot, the roads are fine. I'm in the Midwest now, where weather ranges from -40 to +40 over the course of the year, with at least a month of snow cover, and the roads here are absolutely fucked. Couple in that this is the main artery for industry so every other vehicle on the road is an 18-wheeler, and they're double fucked.
I'm glad there's a push for better infrastructure here in the US, it's shocking how shit everything is here. The houses are built of sticks and plasterboard, my current dwelling even has a plastic exterior. The infrastructure for electricity is awful, and that goes as deep as the basic design of their plugs and sockets over here, which look and feel like they were done as a stop-gap and then never updated to something more robust. They've only just started getting contactless payment, which sickeningly is referred to across the country exclusively as "Apple Pay".
The American suburb really is a terrible thing, I can only hope that some spending gets shoved towards actual public transport so that cities start to develop into more than just a CBD surrounded by highways and residential developments. Socially, that's an even bigger challenge than it is logistically. There was a local news headline just the other day about some twat who wouldn't give up his seat on a bus to a pregnant lady, which resulted in a big commotion, and his argument was "it isn't my fault that she got pregnant when she can't afford a car". It's a country full of selfish cunts, but they don't even realise it about themselves.
>>94444 >It's a country full of selfish cunts, but they don't even realise it about themselves.
I love America, and Americans, and I loved the year or so I have spent working there - mostly in Texas/New York; but you highlight the problem perfectly.
I'm struggling a lot today with the abortion law that has just been passed in Texas; it's literally the dark ages.
>>94445 I'm marrying one, but even she knocks me for six sometimes by acting in a way that just doesn't compute with my own values.
What's missing in America, and what I miss most about Europe, is social cohesion. This is exemplified best when you're in public with American pedestrians, who are completely unaware of their surroundings, leading to congestion and a heightened sense of anxiety and conflict. Just walking down the street is a challenge in this country because everyone is doing their own thing without taking into account the people around them, even their positions and trajectories. An American friend and I did a brief stop in Milan, and he was astounded at the people walking to work at 9 in the morning so fluidly.
Honestly, this stuff is what keeps me in therapy. I'll occasionally notice something that reminds me of that missing link between people over here, and it'll ruin the rest of my day. Most recently it was how shit American men dress.
>>94446 > he was astounded at the people walking to work at 9
I lived in Houston for a while - famously hot/humid. My office was less than 1km from where I was living, so I walked most mornings - maybe five blocks. EVERY DAY someone would stop their car and ask what the fuck I was doing walking by the side of the road.
As for the American man - I always love the belt attachments, the holsters, mobile phones particularly - they are so naff. Don't even get me started on the shirts/suits.
>>94447 Probably not the same thing, but my parents took me to Florida in 2004 and the door staff at the hotel thought we were completely mental for walking the 500m or so from the entrance to the shops around the corner (I had shitloads of Mountain Dew) and kept trying to push for us to take a taxi to the main road; they pretty much lost their minds when we walked the 1.5 miles from the hotel to Downtown Disney.
One of the other things I remember from that holiday is saying something sarcastic to my mum when we were going through the turnstiles to get into Universal, I think my mum couldn't find the tickets to get in so I told her it was probably the ones with Mickey Mouse on them because I was a massive teen edgelord, and the staff there started falling about like I'd said something truly hilarious, slapping me on the back and shaking my hand and they weren't actually taking the piss, they were being genuine.
>>94449 They were being as genuine as a culture which has normalised corrective braces and surgeries to ensure a uniform head shape under the guise of oral health will allow them to be.
>>94450 And that's the weird thing about being there - I found that many people I would speak with had views which I found utterly abhorent, but they weren't hypocritical and genuinely and honestly believed them.
One or two of you have spoken about how Americans never walk anywhere before, but it still amazes me. Walking along Church Road with all the big trees is a treat even when I'm just going to the supermarket, a small one, but it's still nice.
I think LA might be the place on Earth I want to visit the least. Other than the mediterranean climate, it seems like Hell, and global warming has ruined that so there's literally no point at all now. At least sitting in your car all day probably filters out much of the smog and wildfire smoke you'd otherwise breath.
>>94438 I don't think he's a complete bastard either. However, I do think that the entire system of US governance is unfit for purpose and needs tearing to pieces and rebuilding from the ground up. It's basically an elected monarch and some nobles at the national level and below that a shitshow of competing and overlapping politicians so crooked most comic book villains wouldn't give them the time of day. You probably can't fix it at this point, but the fact that no one, absolutely no cunt at all, is even considering changing how it works is tragic. Hundreds of millions of the poor bastards stuck inside a democracy purposely designed to be as undemocratic as possible. No wonder they can't walk anywhere, they're probably traumatised without even knowing it. Whatever, look at me typing away when the closest this country gets to reforming our system of government is talking about how we don't talk about Lords reform and have a hereditary monarch.
>>94453 >It's basically an elected monarch and some nobles at the national level
I think of American politics more like a council of village elders who never change, but every four years you get to decide what colour ties they wear. And the village is obsessed with ties so that's all they ever see and don't notice that nothing ever changes.
>No wonder they can't walk anywhere, they're probably traumatised without even knowing it.
Not traumatised, patronised. Capitalism is the problem with America, in short. Or to be more precise, perhaps, consumerism.
The unique thing about America, really, when you cut it to the bone and compare it to every other developed country, is that every single aspect of a human being's life in the United States is commodified. Every single little aspect of the human experience is a product, whatever human feeling or action you can imagine, there's something to buy and sell for it. America is the only country in the world where you can imagine some grubby businessman trying to marketise the air you breathe, and instead of a dystopian satire, conclude "Yeah, that's quite plausible actually."
I mean, we're not that far off, but in America it's truly pervasive, because the country is built on the foundational principle that that's exactly how things should be. They don't walk because they're encouraged not to- The car industry wants every penny it can make out of the population, so cars are woven into the very fabric of everyday life. They're not a vehicle to Americans, they're an essential appliance like your fridge or your central heating.
There's a lot of examples that'll come to mind if you start thinking about it. Their mad dentistry has already been brought up. Americans always use tumble driers, even when they live in the fucking desert- They simply never even think about putting clothes out to dry, because they've been sold a product to do it. If you watch telly in the states and sit through the adverts, it's mental. Even religious redemption is a product you can buy.
>>94457 >They don't walk because they're encouraged not to- The car industry wants every penny it can make out of the population, so cars are woven into the very fabric of everyday life
IIRC, there are parts of America where the motor industry bought out bus and tram companies to deliberately run them into the ground. They're also the reason they have the crime of jaywalking, to shift the perception of responsibility if someone gets run over from the car and driver to the pedestrian.
To my knowledge the only country with a system of governance anything like the US which hasn't suffered a coup is the US itself. Everywhere else the specific system of checks and balances between the legislature and the executive which seems to be fellated by americans and a certain kind of non-american leads not to some desirable system of liberal, responsible, hands-off governance, but to the president and the congress deadlocking (each claiming legitimacy from the electorate) until one side goes "bugger this" and gets on the phone to the army to shell the other lot. (Unlike in Westminster systems which resolve this using the crazy idea of having the PM call a snap election or having parliament hold a vote of confidence, leading either to a new government or a snap election. Or European systems which are their own odd thing.)
There's an incredible gulf between the quality of outcomes their system generates (no coups yet, but the government still shuts down every so often in a ridiculous piece of political theatre) and the reputation it has. (Maybe cargo culting around the fact it happens to be used by a global superpower, even if it is one who'd do much better to scrap their entire system of government and steal Australia's.)
